Not A Pet
by Green Feather
Summary: Sora attempts to befriend a Shadow.


A/N: written for a prompt from the LJ community comment_fic.

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Sora first noticed the Shadow lurking around the Gummi Ship one early morning, he wasn't fully awake yet and didn't bother calling for his Keyblade, simply staring at the little creature for a moment. Then he sat down on the ground and watched the sun rise, waiting for his friends to wake up; the Heartless simply kept aimlessly wandering around in and out of his peripheral vision.

Returning to the ship at the end of the day, Sora saw two bright yellow dots in the dark and for a few moments pondered on getting rid of the Heartless. But his friends didn't notice anything and in the end he followed them inside without saying a word.

They were spending more time than not at Radiant Garden lately, helping Leon and friends rebuild their old homes. They parked the Gummi Ship always in the same spot and Sora was getting used to being the first one to wake up and watch the sun rise. The Shadow was always around, twitching and wandering, but never attacking him or getting too close. He let it be, even if he wasn't sure why.

A week after the first encounter, Sora got an idea. Making sure to be fully awake before exiting the ship, he simply crouched down instead of sitting on the ground, and extended his hand towards the little creature of darkness. (He didn't forget those times he saw one these little creatures kill innocent people, but it seemed like such a distant memory now that he could defeat whole groups of them with a single hit.) It took a while, and he was getting worried the Shadow simply couldn't understand what he was trying to do, but then with its awkward movements it advanced towards him, and when close enough, Sora gently touched its head. The feeling was weird, it made him feel cold inside, but not quite like when he turned into his Anti Form, somewhat different and definitely not as much. Only vaguely unpleasant, like the lingering taste of a sour paopu fruit on his tongue.

Their travels brought them away for a while, and the first morning back Sora was glad to see the Shadow again. He had definitely got attached to it, but the thought didn't scare him as much as it probably should have. "Maybe I should give you a name." petting something that wasn't always quite completely solid and always twitching and sometimes even disappeared into the ground (Sora thought that was the Heartless' way of expressing happiness, which was sort of really adorable, actually) was an adventure into itself. If he stared too long at those yellow eyes the cold inside him hurt in different ways, and he strained to remember things he didn't really know. "Vanitas, I'm calling you Vanitas. I'm not sure why, but it seems to fit."

Sora wasn't sure if what he was doing could be considered having a pet, he wasn't offering the creature a place, or food, or anything other than some probably unneeded company. But it was nice, the quietness of those moments, the now almost constant feeling of cold. The rest of the day was always full of fighting and running, and there wasn't time to stop and think too hard about what he was doing.

It was one night when Donald and Goofy almost found out about Vanitas. They were walking back to the Gummi Ship when they noticed those yellow eyes in the dark and got ready to fight, but Sora quickly diverted their attention to himself, yawning loudly and making a show of how exhausted he was. He walked back inside and his friends followed, always ignoring the fights he didn't throw himself at.

He spent the night outside, curled up on the ground as the Shadow circled around him until he fell asleep.

Cold, his hands were constantly cold lately. Nothing seemed able to warm them up, but after a while it stopped bothering him. Sora wondered if there was a point in thinking _I'm cold _when it had became his default body temperature.

His Anti Form was emerging more and more often during fights, always leaving him dizzy and not quite sure what had happened afterwards. But when a whole year of his life was missing from his memories already, Sora didn't worry about a few minutes of confusion. As long as he could fight he wouldn't make a problem out of it.

"Why are you always sleeping outside?" "Am I? Maybe I sleepwalk! Guess I find sleeping on the ground comfortable enough." Sora hoped his laugh sounded light and not nervous. There was a constant low thrumming noise in his ears that made his head ache and long him for even more cold to soothe the pain.

They found him one morning while he was playing with Vanitas. Petting and scratching him as if it were an actual pet (and not an unfeeling creature made out of darkness of someone's dead heart). They screamed and got ready to attack. The Shadow disappeared in an instant, but Sora had now worked out how to turn into his Anti Form at will, and attacked them right back, his fingers were almost claws and he tried to grab at his friends' outfits to stop them without hurting.

There was a lot of confusion, but the event got written off and almost forgetten after a while. Nothing had really happened and nobody got hurt, it ended as quickly and everybody seemed to agree it was just a misunderstanding.

It all ended as it started. One quiet morning, the sun slowly rising in the sky above Radiant Garden. Sora woke up not to a single pair of bright yellow eyes, but to many of them, crowding around him quietly in the morning light. He smiled and raised his hands, not feeling any surprise in finding them black and cold. He yearned for something, and even if there was still a small voice in him telling this was wrong, to turn back now, turn back and leave, this new instinct was quickly overriding everything else. Darkness, darkness, he wanted to find hearts and envelop them in darkness.

There were voices, yells, someone was screaming at him but he didn't care. He looked at the group of Shadows around him and realized he couldn't even tell them apart, he would have laughed at the though that probably it hadn't even been the same Shadow day after day all that time, but there wasn't really any reason to worry about it now. He leaped through the portal of darkness without looking back, ready to hunt for hearts.


End file.
